Prof. David Forbes

Professor Forbes is the Academic Director at Maudsley Health, UAE and based in Abu Dhabi. He is a clinical psychologist and an international expert, with over 25 years’ experience, in the assessment and treatment of mental health problems in trauma survivors, with a speciality in military, veteran, emergency workers, workplace and disaster mental health.

Professor Forbes completed his Doctorate, Masters in Clinical Psychology and Bachelor of Arts (Psychology, Honors) degrees at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is a Professorial Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne and for his distinguished contributions to the field of psychology was named as a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society

Until his recent appointment as Academic Director, Maudsley Health, Professor Forbes was for the previous 13 years Director of Phoenix Australia – Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Australia’s leading Centre of Excellence in trauma-related mental health.

Professor Forbes is deeply committed to initiatives to improve outcomes for people impacted by adverse events and trauma through taking the evidence for what works and translating the translation of research into effective policy and practice. This includes:
• developing and delivering training to medical and allied health providers in the assessment
and evidence-based treatments
• development and evaluation of new innovations in early intervention, treatment and models
of care
• providing advice and consultation to clinical services to develop their ability to provide
best practice and effective treatment and to organisations about how best to support staff
impacted by adversity and trauma as part of their work, such as emergency workers or in
their personal lives.

On the academic side Professor Forbes has published over 250 peer-reviewed articles in leading international journals and book chapters. Notably he lead-edited the international society of traumatic stress book “Effective Treatments for PTSD”, based on the international society’s PTSD treatment guidelines. He also led the development of the inaugural Australian Clinical Practice Guidelines for the prevention and treatment of Acute Stress Disorder, PTSD and Complex PTSD. Professor Forbes also has an interest in trauma related anger, and developed treatments and co-edited “Anger at Work”, focused on examining anger in high-risk occupations.

He has been a member of many expert advisory committees for governments and other organisations, including NATO panel for human performance and personalised medicine; Chairs the PTSD treatment guidelines committee for the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, inaugurated and co-chaired the “Five-Eyes” (USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) Military and Veteran Mental Health Research and Innovation Collaborative and has sat on many Australian Government Expert Advisory Committees